I found an even better paper on this subject: Levy, Frank and Peter Temin. Inequality and Institutions in 20th Century America. M.I.T.: Unpubl. ms. (http://www.econ.barnard.columbia.edu/~econhist/papers/InequalityWF.pdf)
On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 9:48 AM, Jim Devine<[email protected]> wrote: > Thanks to help from pen-pals, especially Erdogan Bakir, I've produced > the following paragraph. Comments are welcome. I think that it's very > interesting that that old fraud Martin Feldstein's article admits that > wages are increasingly falling behind productivity without noting the > fact that it goes against his core beliefs. > >> This [trickle-down] vision, however, contradicts recent experience in the >> United States and many other advanced capitalist countries. Three O.E.C.D. >> economists note that > >> >>Over the last two decades, the share of wages in total income has tended >> >>to decline in a large number of European countries as well as in the >> >>United States. (de Serres et al., 2001: 375). << > >> For the U.S., McConnell and Brue’s second assertion above [that real wages >> always catch up with the trend of labor productivity] seems contradicted by >> their diagram 26.1 on the same page, at least after about 1980 [2008, p >> 523]. Looking more deeply, Krueger (1999: 47, 49) found that up to 1998 >> “labor’s share declined by almost 3 percentage points since reaching a >> plateau in the mid-1970’s” in the national income and product ac-counts. >> Using another measure and correcting for the counting “some business owners’ >> income [as part of] labor compensation” implies a “substantial 5.6-point >> fall in labor’s share” between 1988 and 1995. Willis and Wroblewski (2007: >> 15) indicate that real wages lagged behind labor productivity growth by 0.3 >> percentage point per year between 1973:Q4 to 1995:Q4 and by 0.5 percentage >> points between 1995:Q4 and 2006:Q3. Finally, Feldstein (2008: 591) finds >> that between 1970 and 2006, wages lagged 0.2 percentage points per year >> behind productivity growth. Worse, between 2000 and 2007, this lag was about >> double, 0.4 percentage points per year.< > > sources: > De Serres, Alain, Stefano Scarpetta, and Christine de la Maisonneuve. > 2001. Falling Wage Shares in Europe and the United States: How > Important is Aggregation Bias? Empirica. 28: 375-400. > > Feldstein, Martin. 2008. Reference available on demand. > > Krueger, Alan B. 1999. Measuring Labor’s Share. American Economics > Association Pa-pers and Proceedings. 89(2) May: 45-51. > > McConnell, Campbell R. and Stanley L. Brue. 2008. Economics: > Principles, Problems, and Policies. New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin. > > Willis, Jonathan L. and Julie Wroblewski. 2007. What Happened to the > Gains From Strong Productivity Growth? Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas > City Economic Review. 1st Quarter: 5-23. > > > > > > -- > Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own > way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. > -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
